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Eye on the World: Prayer for healing in Ferguson, Missouri
Events in Ferguson, Missouri, have made headlines around the world. Prayer can help us deal with those headlines and open up the way for compassion, brotherly love, and peace. As Gerry Noll, the owner of a bicycle shop in Ferguson put it, “Yes, #Ferguson has become the byword for police brutality and all these national problems. But my hope is that #Ferguson becomes about how a community overcomes this and grows from it, and even becomes a model for the nation on how to deal with racial problems.”
Here are some articles that address feelings associated with racism and the mental elements that can arise in such situations.
“A higher view of community” describes how a Christian Scientist entered a community caught up in racial strife and how his prayers not only helped him but also supported the evolution to a more peaceful and just environment. The article explains: “God's wide community is neither disruptive atop nor seething underneath. Peace and well-being are embraced by it. It is actually here—everywhere—and we can begin to discern that fact.”
An African author offers this thought in "How I pray about racism": “As we all soar, a little like the astronauts, in this divine heaven by focusing our thoughts on the good we each have from God, the differences between us will start to disappear, and the universe will become a more beautiful, heavenly unity.”
A passenger on a train was confronted by a disruptive and heated situation, but gained this insight from her prayer as she struggled to overcome frustration: “I was humbled to be reminded exactly who was doing the unifying, constituting, ending, fulfilling, annihilating, equalizing, and annulling. It was God, of course. No limited, human sense of love was going to do that, but divine Love could—and did.”
Divine Love is also with all people in Ferguson, Missouri, and anywhere else that is afflicted with racism, no matter what form it takes.